


reprise

by perennial



Category: Much Ado About Nothing (1993), SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, absolutely based on the branagh cast, how it should have ended, not a claudio-friendly fic, rarepairs, they are two sides of the same coin and i'll never be over it, this is me gunning for a certain bard because that ending was a reach and he knew it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26980378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennial/pseuds/perennial
Summary: A year after evading marriage to Claudio, Hero must attempt to do so again - this time with Don John as her unexpected, unwilling, and only ally.
Relationships: Beatrice/Benedick - background, Hero/Don John (Much Ado About Nothing)
Comments: 170
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

Let's write her like an arrow. Silent, obedient, deadly. It flies in one direction, cannot reverse, cannot return midair to the bow that shot it. To pierce a target is its sole purpose. It does not choose its course.

:

In sunlight the dry grasstops are transformed into soft white flames. They sway in the breeze, whispering to their neighbors, sheltering grasshoppers and crows and black-flies and beetles. The drone of toiling bees swells and falls in volume. Distant laborers move through the hot sunshine as though dancing. Wind cannot weave through linen as it does through grass, and so sweat trickles down her neck and down her back, her body expelling all excess liquid in this place where she is dry as a bone.

Clarity tastes like freshly broken glass, feels like the first reverberation of a crystal bell as the clapper strikes the cup. Hero breathes in.

By the time Beatrice (sister-cousin with eyes choking wet, an enraged lioness, both their voices when Hero's lungs fill with water) arrives, the future is unwoven and unlayered: porcelain ground to dust. Her hand is warm and brown and easy to tug down to join one in the fortress of golden grass.

She is set on murder, but Hero is already molten.

:

They drip words into her ears: say she must be reborn, contradicting the scriptures she has spent her life learning. Hero knows: new life comes through only one man. He hangs in effigy in the tiny clay-walled chapel that watched the earth open up to swallow this morning's happy bride, to drown her in an early grave dug by the count whose troth—they now say—will cleanse her.

Rebirth?

There is no dross to burn away.

:

He was born a ghost: a lurker sheltered by shadows, invisible standing in the center of the room. He haunts them with a vengeance, with hatred bright as hot iron, turns the house into a wreckage while grinning at the sight.

When she opens her mouth to ask the questions churning within her ribcage, water pours in, flooding her veins and sinking her like a stone. He is gone by the time her throat has drained but she soon realizes that she already knows everything she needs to know.

:

Beatrice is married in a cloud of gold, the harvest is brought in, and Hero's hair grows long.

:

She wonders. To have found her voice (just a breath of a voice, mere seconds' worth of voice, but enough to stop the arrow) freed her, but has it set her ruin in stone? Should she have squared her shoulders and donned the mask they told her to wear? Accepted the humiliation, given herself forever to the heartless man who knowingly set her life on fire?

They all haunt her: in her nightmares, strong hands dragging her to the chapel door—in the new lines that branch out from her father's eyes, the sudden snow of his beard—in the dread that curdles in her stomach every time an unmarried man looks at her hungrily and shakes his head—in the green veins of a grapevine leaf, asking how long, how long will this be hers?

:

Later Beatrice will cry the hot tears she only sheds for one person and say "I never should have left, I should have stayed and kept you safe" and Benedick will throw his hands in the air and Hero will explain about drowning.

—But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

:

Don Pedro's villa is a massive thing. The carriage drives along the border of the eastern edge for an hour before reaching the sword-straight lane that leads to the house.

And there he is.

He looks exactly as he did a year ago: thick hair falling in his eyes, boyish smile on a boyish face giving no indication of the wounds he inflicted with such cruelty and venom. She feels muffled, gagged, unable to find the air that will enable her to refuse the hand he extends to her.

Don Pedro and her father embrace as though their friendship was never tainted, and Count Claudio leads Hero in to supper.

:

Traveling performers are the welcoming entertainment. They dance across flagstones amidst fiery cauldrons that light the autumn evening. Claudio looks away long enough for Hero to slip into the shadows of the villa gardens.

She wanders and inhales the scents of cypress and laurel. She tries to think like Beatrice.

When she reaches the far edge of oil-wick light she carries on, letting moonlight guide her, unafraid in the quiet calm of cicada whirs and the scent of the cooling vineyards. From here the music at the house is inaudible. If Claudio's boots were to sound on the gravel, she would hear them early enough to hide in a dozen different places.

The telltale splash of liquid leads her to a plaza bordered on three sides by cypress. Flagstones encircle a fountain in which water cascades from a central tier into a large pool. The heart of the dark garden is briefly lit by pipe-glow.

And here he is.

"It's late to be wandering through a stranger's house, Lady Hero."

In the moonlight she can make out the dark head and broad shoulders of yet another man she hoped to never see again.

"My lord." He half-sits, half-leans on the fountain rim. Some compulsion propels her forward; she thinks it must be the way he is lineless in the moonlight, all the edges of him merging with the night. Dark and pale blurs solidify into the face of the bastard prince. No ghost. Flesh and blood. "So you _are_ here."

He sounds amused. She remembers his voice: low, deep, every word measured. "Did they tell you I had died?"

"No one has mentioned you at all."

His smile is bitter. "Even in disgrace I don't exist. Does that please you?"

She keeps silent. The orange fire in his pipe glows bright and subsides. His look is appraising. He takes another long drag and exhales slowly. "I am under strict orders to not let you see my face." He straightens and displays himself, arms extended to their full length, and bows to her. "What do you make of me, then?"

"You are in good health."

He laughs. "Poor Lady Hero. Even now propriety won't allow you to say what you think of me. I know you want to run; run."

She is so weary of being afraid. Here is the nightmare, standing before her: not the ghoul who has lurked in her mind, just a man, when all is said and done. The fear is drying out; another moment and it is gone.

She says, "I will know the truth."

"An odd place to come seeking it."

The question that rises to her tongue surprises them both. "Would you do it again?"

"Soon I may have the opportunity." He raises a mocking brow; his tone is derisive. "You know why you're here, surely? It's the same old play for your hand. Claudio has gilded his name, again. He wishes to wed you, again. My brother will woo you for him, again. You will accept him, again. Nothing has changed."

Hero looks away across the gardens. A moving lantern denotes some distant figure clearly coming to find her.

She says, "Everything has changed."

:

They are arranged on a sunny patch of grass: Don Pedro, Leonato, Claudio, the prince and counts' mutual friends, and Hero, all orbited by household staff.

The last flowers of summer bloom in profusion around them. Hero is recreating them in watercolor as a means of avoiding conversation with the man seated beside her, though he persists in speaking despite her silence. The men of the party have been refilling their wine cups for an hour and are ebullient and sweating in the still air. Hero waits until a joke is told and laughter has faded to smiles before she asks, "Does your brother scorn us, Don Pedro?"

"No, lady. I thought it would trouble you to see him." Leonato makes approving sounds.

Hero says, "I thank you for the compliment of your protectiveness, sir, though I must then wonder - does he mean to do me an injury in the safety of your own house? Under your own gaze?" She stands and summons her maid. Her father shakes his head repressively at Claudio, who is half-rising.

She walks the shaded garden paths with her maid—a quiet, shy girl, loyal and trustworthy but too new yet to be a confidante. When her sun-simmering blood has cooled, she returns to the group on the grass to find Don John has joined them.

He glares at her. She smiles sweetly at him.

Unasked, Claudio holds out her paints and refreshes her rinse water. He wears a scowl like a thunderstorm. The bastard prince's presence has clearly tainted the afternoon. Even sunshine and wine cannot clear the air; amorous conversation is out of the question. Hero concentrates on the flowers.

:

A troupe of traveling actors provide the evening's entertainment. She is again seated next to Claudio. Don Pedro led her to her place, so she cannot move elsewhere.

She cannot guess what has been told to her father, but it has sufficiently wiped the conclusion of the previous summer from his mind. Gilded Claudio shines from Leonato's eyes, his very name a blessing on her father's lips. Leonato and Don Pedro sit near the far edge of the makeshift stage and smile at the two of them.

The bastard prince is present as well, to her surprise. He keeps his eyes on the stage and speaks to no one. She cannot help noticing the way everyone distances themselves from his seat.

She has seen the play before and disliked it; Don John is a far more interesting study. This man, this self-proclaimed villain, his bastard blood a stain on the face of society: what makes a man wish to destroy a good woman who has never hurt him? Her life came a breath from disaster in partial thanks to him. She would have lost her entire future: her chance at marriage and with it her inheritance, her home, the farm, her good standing in Messina. All for want of the truth. There are still days when she wonders if the taint on her will last her life long, if any man will be capable of grasping the truth of her innocence, if her father will die without a married heir and then she may as well have left her life buried in front of the little chapel.

And then, like a key turning in a lock, she understands the bastard prince completely.

His life was born buried. He was born shunned. Every day of his life has been the one she almost had thrust upon her, and through no fault of his own, though the shame is nonetheless his lifelong burden.

How long has he been alone, with only his hurt and hatred for companions?

What such man would not strike at any point where he could land a blow?

She watches him, openly, even though she knows she shouldn't. Anyone might notice, and he does. And yet even when he meets her eyes it doesn't occur to her to look away. She watches him realize her gaze is indeed fixed on him, watches a puzzled frown cross his face. She watches him look away and then look back.

He watches her as openly as she has been watching him, his eyes alert and guarded as though waiting for a trap to be sprung—but he has stopped being her enemy, if only he knew it, or perhaps it is better said that she is not his. She has not been his enemy for these two minutes, since she realized why he is a ghost, and what part she played in making him one.

:

She makes the question light as air: how long will they impose upon Don Pedro's hospitality?

Leonato laughs. "For the season, if we like." His smile is knowing. He heard a different question than the one she asked. "Have no fear of departure. Goodnight, daughter." He kisses her cheek.

She tries to think like Beatrice—distant, happy Beatrice, who does not know that Hero is here and whose voice cannot be counted on to fill the space where Hero's isn't. For Beatrice, a thought is but a handclasp's distance from the tongue; for Hero it is the journey from the heart of a hurricane to peaceful seas. And now there is no one who can hear her cries for help, and sharks are circling.


	2. Chapter 2

Rain has not fallen on the vineyard in weeks but the dirt under her sandals is dark and giving due to Don Pedro's complex irrigation system. Hero gives thanks for it: it means that she is not kicking up a trackable cloud of dust as she runs.

She hurtles down a row that stands just taller than her head. The vines are thick with leaves and fat indigo grapes, which form a wall that shields her from searching eyes. At the end of the row she runs a few lengths down the cross lane and ducks into another. There she stops, winded, heart pounding, and listens.

For a minute she thinks herself safe; then the jingle of boot buckles reaches her ears and her heart sinks. Claudio has picked the correct crossway. The sounds of him are still distant but rapidly growing closer.

She begins to creep down her row, for all the good it will do. Bright white linen provides little camouflage and he is a determined hunter. She might run to the far boundary of the vineyard and he will still corner her.

Other heavy footsteps make their way up the row adjoining hers, the last one between her hiding spot and pursuer. Don John's voice says, "Count Claudio."

Hero's head jerks up. Both men are fragmented into patches of cloth through the gaps in the leaves.

Claudio's voice is stiff. "I seek the Lady Hero."

"Think you she would linger where I am?" Hero does not have to see the prince's face to know the look of contempt spread across it, but directed at the count, not himself.

Claudio turns angry. "What busies you here? Injuring my lord's crop?"

"A prisoner of this house I may be, but even I have my uses. Your lord has made oversight of the vineyard my responsibility. Does it burn your throat, _lord_ , to know the wine you guzzle with such relish was made by these filthy hands?"

Hero holds her breath, waiting for the sound of knuckles connecting with flesh; but all she hears are bird calls and the rustle of a mouse moving though the vine leaves, then the furious tread of Claudio's boots marching away down the lane from whence he came.

Hero creeps away. She pauses at a gap in the vine wall to look back at the prince. He is still standing in the lane, watching the other man go, his shoulders thrown back, his head high and lip scornful.

:

Suppertime, and here is Claudio, asking for the honor of escorting her in.

Hero says, "I have already been asked." She steps toward Don John.

The bastard prince is many things, but slow on the uptake isn't one. He extends an arm to her as casually as a man who truly had made the request. He catches her hand in his and, with his eyes on hers, presses his mouth to her skin so hard she can feel his teeth through his lips.

He succeeds in his aim: the men watching fidget, angered, and Hero is a little scared.

He guides her inside, full paces ahead of the others. Within the cool tunnel of the outer hall she summons her voice. "I thank you." Her words do not tremble, for which she silently gives thanks.

He shakes his head.

"It's like watching a bird hop into the open jaws of a crocodile," he says, and shakes her loose at her designated seat before she can ask who is meant to be the predator.

:

In the morning she hunts him to the portico. The papers strewn about him are covered in diagrams of vines and barrels. He is working on a sketch that has not yet taken an identifiable shape.

She seats herself on the couch across from his table but she does not open her book. "How do you spend your days?"

He looks at her, clearly wondering why she is asking.

She opens her mouth—and watches the intimate milieu of the porch fall into immediate ruin. Claudio materializes, vibrating with the need to protect her and, most likely, usher her to a secluded spot where he may propose to her without the taint of Don John's presence. As the prince never misses an opportunity to abuse the count, he delivers a string of insults with a vicious deftness that turns Claudio red and raging within seconds. Hero, irritated by both the interruption and the brewing fisticuffs, is forced to smooth the conversation back into one suited to the presence of a lady. The men acquiesce with poor grace.

"Hero?" Claudio demands. "We shall take a stroll through the gardens."

"I have my book." She shows him.

He shows her a tight smile. "Shall I join you?"

She crack opens the spine, not looking up at him, and says casually, "If you like."

He stands beside her without moving. She pretends to read and prays Don John remains silent.

Finally he bows—"Perhaps another time," and Hero's held breath sighs out—and marches away. The peace of the morning returns. Exultant birdsong bursts from the garden trees. A breeze ripples through the papers on the table and teases Hero's curls.

When she casts a surreptitious glance upward, Don John is working on his sketch again, but now there is a faint curve to his lips.

She opens her mouth.

"Hero!" Her father's voice. He emerges from the house, looking around for her. She silently curses the expression that crosses his face at the sight of her companion.

"Good morrow, lord."

The prince returns the greeting stiffly.

Leonato tells her, "I thought to join you for breakfast. What do you _here?_ " He glances at the man at work, his meaning clear. Hero watches Don John's fingers tighten around his pen. His jaw clenches; his eyes have stopped moving.

"Shall we?" Fingers close around her arm and this time she cannot demur.

She does not see him for the rest of the day.

:

She imagines Beatrice's voice sitting inside her lungs, speaking of its own accord.

"I do not wish to marry Claudio," she tells her father.

What isn't to want? He has partnered in a shipping business and has grown quite wealthy these past months. He is sought by every eligible lady—at the highest levels of Court, even!

"I will not be wife to a man capable of showing such vicious cruelty to a woman he purported to love, as he did to me a year ago."

He was crazy with jealousy and betrayal; one can hardly blame him for acting as he did. If anything, it shows how much he loved her. He still does. He has expressed his feelings to Don Pedro. Surely she wishes to marry a man who loves her?

"I do not trust him, Father. How can I, after his treatment of me?"

It was a moment of folly. If she would only let him, Claudio would prove to her that he has learned from the experience and is wholly changed. Can she not see how eager he is to do so?

"I could never be happy with such a man."

She loved him once—she might yet! Perhaps she simply needs to admit her secret heart to herself.

And she might remember, after all, that it isn't as though her hand is being sought by anyone else.

Hero tries to speak but her lungs are empty as a windswept desert.

:

Her life if she marries Claudio:

Food in the bellies of her workers and their families, sleeping within the shelter of the roof she was born under, sun on the villa hillsides her only comfort, burning her from the inside out; her husband's eyes dark with envy, dark with contempt, dark with accusation, her children learning at his knee, her every breath under observation, open for questioning; navigating each day with the precision required to cross a tightrope, reaching out through the morass for a hand that isn't there, Beatrice beating with both arms against the cage that carries Hero all the way to the sea floor; the sun passing in the sky, the harvest throwing up its bounty without concern for those who toil and tend it, her father smiling in his grave.

Her life if she does not marry:

Her loved ones, her most beloveds, turned out to sleep with rocks for pillows, their bellies shrunken and cramping; stranger's feet dancing over the soil that cradles the bones of her ancestors, her father's name swept into the air like so much dust, her empty hands unacknowledged by those who wept over her mother's death; following Beatrice into a back room with a window that overlooks hot brown hills, singing her nieces to sleep, her worth laboriously re-proved daily, her existence negated by sunrise; the taint of her name following her like the stench of death, her feet stumbling in the morass and sinking down, down, carrying all her family with her.

:

Don Pedro's lands are extensive, his house is large, and both are densely populated. There are few places Hero can go without anyone knowing her location. The gardens are the best place to conceal oneself, but she utilizes them so often that it becomes a point of concern in itself. Frequenting a hiding spot only helps advertise it.

Her favorite nook is a bench that sits within the shelter of two cloaking trees. It is situated at the top of a low hill, giving her a view of all the gardens and the sunny back side of the house. She can detect the movement of almost anyone coming or going, so long as they stay to the main paths.

Today she is there with a book, lifting her head at the turn of each page to reaffirm her solitude. She knows most of the gardeners by sight now. Her father and Don Pedro briefly appear on the back veranda to survey something to the north. There is Don John, directing the repair of one of the garden fountains. A grey cat darts across a side path. The distant laundresses flicker in and out of sight, surrounded by billowing white.

The next time she looks up it is to find Claudio striding down the path toward her. She is certain he cannot see her—she has studied this spot from his current vantage and knows herself invisible to him—but it is clear he knows she is somewhere within the garden, and if he keeps to his chosen road he will find her. She slips out of her seat and makes her way quickly down a side path toward the entrance to the hedge maze. Chancing a look over her shoulder, she realizes with horror that Claudio has changed direction and is turning the corner at the far end of the lane. She plunges in.

Like everything in Don Pedro's grounds, the maze is a massive thing. The green walls are dense with health; they tower over her, unscalable and identical, and it isn't long before concern in regard to Claudio's location becomes concern for her own. She is well and truly lost.

Footsteps. Hero whirls, unable to determine from which direction the sound is coming. She does not know whether to go north or south, left or right, doesn't know if she is running toward a dead end, can't be alone with Claudio, can't let him speak—

An iron hand grips the hook of her elbow and pulls her backward. She stumbles, inhaling sharply, too startled to make a sound, and finds herself looking up into the frowning face of Don John.

"Not that way."

"Is he—"

" _Yes_."

He drags her down the path by her wrist. She follows obediently. His stride is long and quick, and to keep up with him she has to move at a pace faster than walking but not quite running; it feels like dancing.

At the next crossway he stops and listens. Satisfied, he sallies forth again, his fingers still tight as a vise. "This is a complicated maze," he informs her, as though she is to blame for it, "and my brother gave the map to your suitor. Why do you think he might have done so?"

"How could I have known he did?" The dance is turning her breathless.

"By now I'd think it would be understood that everything around you might serve as a trap."

"Unless I'm with you," she supplies. He doesn't reply.

He halts so suddenly she swings forward, thrown off her stride. A moment later she finds herself hauled into a side alley that ends in nothing more than a small bench. Don John pushes her against the wall of green, then stands like a wall in front of her. A stern look cast over his shoulder is meant to serve as a silencer, but it isn't as though she is prone to whimpering or fits of giggles, and she stands behind him with her breath held and her bare arm warm against the soft cloth of his coat.

A crunch of boots on gravel grows louder - hesitates - then turns down another path and slowly fades.

Her wrist is encircled once more and the dance resumes.

There is a break in the greenery and the exit is abruptly upon them. Don John drops her arm and turns to face her. "Our ways part here. If he manages to find you I daresay you deserve it." He looks suddenly annoyed. "Why do you look at me so?"

Hero is smiling at him so broadly her cheeks ache. She bites her bottom lip around her smile, so happy she can hardly think. "Thank you," she tells him, "for helping me."

"Any appearance of a service done to you is a misconception, I assure you. My only purpose was to deny the crocodile its meal. You had better get back to your bower before he realizes you've escaped."

By the time she has thought of a reply he is already halfway down the lane, marching away from her with the determined stride of a soldier.


	3. Chapter 3

Hero designs it so that Don John is her escort to supper every evening. A hand held out to the bastard prince, a vague story of his prior claim - she repeats the scene until it no longer needs explanation to the others and Don John anticipates it without a word from her.

He bends over her hand in a loose linen shirt that reveals the hollow at his throat, the points of his clavicles. Hero's eyes are level with the solid column of his neck. She is close enough to see the blunt cut of the black hairs on his cheek and the sheen of sweat on his sun-browned skin.

He kisses her hand like a king and Claudio gnashes his teeth.

She flows alongside him into the hall, knowing on some deep wordless level that his confident saunter is a sort of reciprocate claim of her: an invisible hand reaching out to meet the one she stretches toward him without his stated permission; a place chosen beside an associate in whom nothing is found wanting.

:

She looks at him.

When a joke sends roars up and down the crowded supper board, or arguments do the same, her eyes are on him. Initially she only wants to see his reaction; then, she wants to share the moment in a small glass case that contains just the two of them.

Eventually he starts looking back. It is as with her hand and his escort: soon enough he learns to expect her eyes turned his way.

She is not deterred by his glares. Any woman who grew up alongside Beatrice knows how to discern between true venom and mere facade. Hero has also spent some years knowing the power of her own smile, which she engages now.

Warmth, amusement, encouragement: all these things she sends down the table like sure watercraft on a tumultuous river. Share this with me, clasp my hidden hand. One covert smile after another. Layer upon quiet layer.

It works, to her secret delight. Over time, wariness and puzzlement give way to lips twitching upward, a wink of his black eye, an arched brow. More often than not by the time her eyes reach his face, his are already turned her way, waiting.

She is careful—oh, so careful. Attention is on her at all times and they watch what she watches. A supper escort is all he is permitted to be to her. The morning on the portico was lesson enough: were she to demonstrate any real interest in him, his place at the table would become vacant. She would not see him for the rest of her time at the villa. Don Pedro is a benevolent jailer, but he does not hesitate to use his power as he sees fit.

It must all be in the eyes. A quick hook of his gaze and grin cast at her plate. Beaming a smile at his neighbor and eyes lighting on those of its true recipient. Eyes skimming across the room to catch the smile on his face. Stifled laughter dressed as a cough, a subtle lift of the corner of her mouth, a glance at the wall behind his head, knowing he is reading the message on her face. It is a language all their own.

There are ways, she is learning, of speaking without words.

:

Bright sunshine pours through the open library door and transforms the flagstones into white gold. The lower level windows add to the confusion of light, creating a blinding whirlpool that flushes every shadow from the corners of the room but leaves the shuttered upper level relatively dim.

Hero creeps along an upper walkway. Every barefoot step is perfectly silent. The white-coated figure of Claudio stands in the lower room, looking for her.

Her target is the end of the row, where an archway opens to a stairwell that leads to the roof. An escape route proves unnecessary, however: after a fruitless examination of the room, Claudio goes back outside. Hero, distrustful of this victory, straightens but keeps a weather eye on the door.

Don John is standing at the end of the row, leaning against a bookcase with arms crossed over his chest. An index finger holds his place in a book.

He sounds amused. "You cannot hide from him forever."

"I dispute that claim. I am becoming rather good at this."

He studies her. There are tunnels, he tells her: underground roads running through the foundations. They only connect the main rooms of the house and are used primarily by servants, but they might serve her well if she finds herself cornered. Would she like to see them?

She would, very much.

"You trust me to hide you?"

"I trust no one here so much as you. Is that not strange?"

"Strange indeed, as well as foolhardy."

"My counsel tells me otherwise, and my counsel is good," she informs him. "As it must be, for I am often in need of it." She could almost be Beatrice, tossing such a quip at him.

He laughs, a brief, low sound; but the smile that chases it lingers. It is the first time she has seen a genuine smile on his face. His teeth flash white and lines crease out around his eyes. He is always cool as deep water and remains so now, but his eyes shine like the sun on a lake's surface.

She imagines that dormant passion provoked to fireworks. She wants to witness it, wants to feel the heat of the flame. The smile she gives him in return is slow and happy.

They have to dodge half a dozen gardeners, two of Don Pedro's infantrymen, and Hero's maid, who is standing in the middle of the courtyard looking around like a lost baby bird, but manage to make it safely to a short stairwell that plunges into the earth behind a mass of blooming oleander, just steps from the kitchen garden. A wooden door is set in the wall at the bottom. High above them, Hero can see the white billowing curtains of her own window, with its view over the laurels to the sunny blue valley below.

Don John has paused with his fingers on the handle. She realizes he has followed her gaze up the wall, and he studies her window for a moment before looking down at her for one heartbeat, two, three. He says: "How could anyone have believed it of you?"

:

He looks at her.

The bastard prince is an unknown oasis in a desert - a blind spot in the mirror - the brief silence after a blow to the head. Everyone around him hates him, so nobody marks him, and, ignoring him, they do not see the way he looks at Hero. Accustomed to this treatment, he barely tries to conceal his attention. She thinks perhaps he does not even realize how poorly he is concealing it; she thinks perhaps he does, and does not care.

From an offhand remark of Don Pedro's she learns that his brother has never loved anyone. It is not difficult from that vantage to believe no one has ever loved him, either.

His face is a stone that cracks when it encounters something new, and so she is able to see how he is taken aback by kind words directed his way. He is unsettled by soft fingers on his wrist; he is suspicious of any overtures toward friendship.

Oh but he is the oasis and the entire desert, dry and gasping and love-starved but not wholly lost, and she can see it in his black eyes that, confused and hesitant as he is, he would burn the whole world for one more gentle word in his ear.

:

After one rebuff too many, Claudio loses his temper over her nightly supper escort. Hero has—with the few words she is willing to speak to him—managed to stave off the eruption for a few days, but the result is that his simmering anger has heated to boiling. Don John kisses the back of her hand and nearly gets a fist in the eye for it.

The portico is missing its master but is brimming with said master's cavalrymen. The bastard prince would have his hands around the count's throat if it wouldn't land him in solitary confinement for the foreseeable future. As it is, he chooses to cut with tone and tongue. He looks down his nose at his contester and drawls, "Wishing for the honor of my escort yourself, _lord?_ "

This time Claudio swings in deadly earnest. Don John used the pause while speaking to step in front of Hero, and one arm reaches back protectively. He deftly dodges the swing. The cavalrymen shout.

Claudio snarls, "Get your hands off her!"

"Control yourself," the prince hisses. "Harm this lady even by accident and I will not be responsible for my actions."

"How dare you suggest—" Claudio begins, then scrambles back in alarm when Don John lunges forward, feinting a swing.

"What is the meaning of this?" bellows Don Pedro. He and Leonato have been sampling wine in the dell below the portico with the cellarmaster; now, clearing the top of the steps, they stride across the flagstones wearing twin expressions of outrage.

Claudio flings an accusing arm in the bastard prince's direction. "He attacks free men and promotes any chance for trouble. He monopolizes the Lady Hero, claiming the space at her side each and every evening. It is common knowledge that their history is less than friendly, and yet she acquiesces so readily it must surely be done under threat."

"Brother?" snaps Don Pedro—his word a warning, his tone like ice.

Don John breathes hard. In clipped, even speech, he informs the assembly, "Upon her arrival here, I asked the Lady Hero if I may accompany her to all meals, as a sign of her forgiveness for wrongs I have done her in times past."

"Aye, the wrongs you have done us all are great indeed!"

"It is no crime to fool a fool." He sneers at the three men. "I have only truly wronged one of you, and for that I am," his black eyes turn toward Hero, "contrite."

Claudio lunges forward and is held back. Everyone is shouting—at the bastard prince, at the count, at the incident itself—and Don John stands still and silent and holds her gaze. Then he looks at the others and, like a shiver across his face, he is aloof and condescending once more. He gives Hero his arm and leads her away. Some of the soldiers follow them to the hall. Her father and Don Pedro stay back to attempt to calm Claudio.

She is barely suppressing a smile. Her fingertips press into his bicep. His other hand comes over to cover hers. It tightens around her hand briefly, then drops.

She whispers, "They didn't deserve an explanation."

"The fuse is burnt out. He wasn't going to take no for an answer any longer."

"It should be enough for them. It should suffice, that I choose to walk with you."

"What I am will never suffice for anyone," he reminds her, "but I thank you for the thought." He bows and leaves her at her chair.

:

She laughs with the laundresses and sketches them among their clouds of white. She paints the gang of dogs that runs through the estate like a canine regiment. She sits in the shade with the old men and plays bocce. She eats sun-warmed grapes and misses her own vines, misses the smiles and footsteps of her own people, misses her firestorm cousin whose heart beats in time with hers despite time and distance.

Beatrice, Beatrice. Hero should write her a letter, should solicit her for words, but something stays her hand.

:

Suppertime, and he reaches for her.

His eyes are dark, watching her. His hand is broad and calloused. His lips barely brush the back of her hand and his breath on her skin is warm.

:

She can feel them: baby-green stems and leaves stretching upward through the long tunnel of her throat. Knot-like buds begin to swell, taking on color as they rise. Ivy fills the crevasses of her lungs and climbs the walls of her esophagus. She opens her mouth and lets in the sun.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i miss parties and warm weather, but y'all are making up for it with your amazing enthusiasm for this little tale. thank you ♡♡♡

Nothing is too opulent when a prince holds a masquerade. Golden candelabras light the gardens, the banquet table boasts ostrich legs and cobra meat, and the cellar's best wine flows freely. Acrobats swing on velvet ropes over the heads of the guests, who wear masks from which diamonds flash.

The merriment is infectious. Music swells in the courtyard and spills into the house and gardens. Firelit cauldrons leap in sync with the assembly, warming those whose blood is not already heated by dance and drink. The dancers wave ribbons as they spin across the flagstones. They sing with their partners and clasp their neighbors' hands, shouting guesses as to who is behind each mask and laughing when proved wrong.

Here is the wise king of Jerusalem: Don Pedro presiding over the revelry in Solomon's robes. Here are Aristotle and Paris of Troy—the governor of Messina and Count Claudio, presently occupied at the wine casks. Here is the Fairie Queene—silver hood cloaking her dark curls, her mask a full face—avoiding the spot where Leonato and Claudio stand. She stands amid but apart from the celebrants; firelight catches on the lines of her throat as her head turns back and forth to search the crowd. Here is the knight Galahad, clasping her hands and drawing her into the shadows of the villa’s lane of royal statues. Whirling forms dart past them.

"It is I," he drawls, "Claudio. Your true love."

Her whole body smiles. "Shall we dance?"

"I must warn you that you have picked a poor partner. It is many years since I have danced and even more since I have enjoyed it."

"Perhaps I have an ulterior motive in choosing you."

"That being?"

"So long as you're dancing with me, you cannot be making mischief elsewhere."

"I would never."

She pulls him into the throng.

Masked, Sir Galahad is made one with the crowd as Don John will never be. They catch hold of him, giving him no choice but to throw back his head and lift his feet, and Hero twirls at his side, her hand locked in his broad callused one, gasping with laughter. Masked, they may look at each other openly, and his head is ever turned her way; she struggles to look anywhere else. The music plunges and soars, energizing their blood, parting them and throwing them back into each other's arms, spinning them deep into the happy crowd, who clasp their hands as though meeting old friends. Hero's heart is as high as the stars.

The music never pauses—the end of one song blends into the start of the next—and the moon itself has stopped in the sky to linger in the festivities, so hours might have passed, days, centuries, when she finds herself standing with both her hands held in Don John's, waiting for their turn to run through the tunnel of raised arms that is part of the sequence of the current dance.

Her voice is full of her smile. "Sir, your earlier assertion is refuted. You dance with skill and, to all appearances, enthusiasm."

"I aim only to assist your cause, lady. So long as I am dancing with you, you can't be accepting the count's proffered hand."

"You have my thanks, as so long as you're dancing with me, said count can't ask me to dance with him."

His hands slide out of hers.

Hero is aware of a misstep, but she doesn't know how to assemble the words to explain that she is not using him to avoid Claudio, and that her only purpose in attending the party was for the opportunity to spend it at his side—nor is she certain of convincing him, nor is this the place for such a conversation, so instead she takes a long breath in and touches his shoulder. "Shall we rest? I would like some air."

He silently offers her his arm.

Tonight the usually quiet gardens are full of revelers. They go to the vineyard.

Their masks are quickly abandoned. The cool night air is bliss to Hero's flushed face. She can sense her companion relaxing: his walk slows to a stroll and he taps light fingers on the vine leaves. He twists off a clutch of dark blue grapes and hands them to her. She eats them slowly, bursting them one by one between her teeth, letting the sweetness fill her mouth. The noise of the party is swallowed by the trill of the night insects. The moonlight makes bright roads of the lanes.

"Where would you go, if you could leave this place?"

"Anywhere. The place wouldn't matter. Anywhere that is not here is enough."

"Tell me, though. If you could choose?"

He is briefly silent, though not, as she thought, to consider his answer. "Why tease me? Why insist on reminding me I will never have a choice?"

"To dream—"

"Only fools dream. I know better than to indulge." He stops walking and fixes his black eyes on her. "You do have a choice, though. You have a choice and yet you are still here."

He won't say it. _How can you?_ How can she consider binding herself to such a man? She almost wishes he would say it, because that would mean he understands—that it is not hypocrisy on his part to think she should spurn a man who has done what Claudio did to her, that Claudio's betrayal injured her on a far deeper level than Don John's vendetta against his brother and his brother's men ever did, that Claudio is still capable of repeating his actions of a year ago, that Don John isn't.

“I wish that were so.” She walks a few paces in silence, considering her words. "My father is growing older. He worries that he will die before I am married. After last summer… though the accusations were recanted… no one but Claudio seeks my hand." The grape leaf is shreds in her hands; she lets the pieces fall away. "My father believes him changed."

"Men like Claudio do not change. They simply hide or reveal more of themselves over time."

"That is my belief as well, but my father is unfortunately less perceptive. My maidservant overheard my father and your brother in conversation." She explains that since she has been refusing to see Claudio, the count has enlisted Don Pedro for help. "They consider my engagement to Claudio as good as settled; all that needs doing is for him to ask for my hand. I wake every morning dreading what the day might hold. My father has never so much as hinted he might choose a husband for me, but he has his heart set on Claudio. I live in fear of somehow driving him to declare I am to marry the count, proposal or no. So long as he does not demand it, I may be able to find a way out."

"I was under the impression you had an affectionate father."

"He believed your deception," she reminds him, "without hesitation. I cannot trust him. If I refuse outright, I risk him enforcing his right to choose my husband. I _must_ marry. We both know it. I am as eager to save my inheritance as he is to see it safe—but _not_ through marriage to Claudio. I just need _time_ , time for the cloud of a year ago to fully disperse, but my father has made it clear our purpose here is Claudio's proposal, which will surely come soon.The count grows irritable with the delay. I half expect to find myself locked in a room with him—or your brother, who will speak for him.”

“And if you left? If you ran away?”

She smiles slightly. “And then? You would have me throw myself on the meager mercy of the world? Make my way alone?”

"There are many who love you. Would your cousin not take you in? Hers is a comfortable home, surely."

"Yes, it is, and she would."

She looks up at him. The corner of his mouth turns up to mirror hers. _Not so alone._

“But I will not poison her name with mine while the tarnish lingers. Or bring trouble to her home or anyone else’s.” Hero worries the ribbon of her cloak. "I wish she were here. Beatrice is clever, especially where tricky situations like this are concerned. She could think of a way out of it. She would know precisely what to say to make my father depart from this place tomorrow morning of his own volition. While _I_ —"

Suddenly she is pouring out the concerns that keep her awake in the gray dawn, that remove her appetite, that birth nightmares which wake her in a cold panic. Her predictions of life as wife to Claudio—trapped in an existence that becomes less and less a life. The devastation that losing her inheritance would wreak on all those she employs and protects. The weight of responsibility her father carries in securing not only her welfare upon his death but the whole of Messina’s, the uncertainty of which she feels keenly. Dread of the injury she may someday do Beatrice with her mere presence if she loses her home and is forced to carry her ruin to her cousin’s door—since to not marry will, in its own silent way, give Claudio’s accusations the appearance of truth. The overwhelming guilt of knowing that the safety of marriage is within a fingertips’ reach and her own selfishness may prove to be the angel of death that will destroy everyone she has ever loved.

She tells him everything, all in a rush, like a burbling fountain who has finally found the relief of a confidante. He listens attentively but with marked silence. Hero is disappointed. How can he be silent in the face of her impending wreckage? Does he not think it terrible?

"It would,” he says quietly, “be terrible in the extreme."

She could bite off her tongue. How is it that her words only flow freely with this man, and all she seems to be able to do with them is hurt him repeatedly? Of course he knows what she is at risk of losing; the worst that she faces has already happened to him.

They both turn at the sound of a distant shout: one of Don John's guards summoning him to the house so he may be locked up for the night. A sharp whistle follows. It seems their timetable does not shift to accommodate masquerades.

"Like a dog to its kennel." He glowers at the house. Hero feels the evening's stolen happiness slide away into the darkness.

"Hero." His night-blurred expression is difficult to make out. "I—dread the day of your departure. But if there is a way in which I can help you flee this place, trust that you may count on my aid. All you need do is say the word." Says the caged prince: "Would that I had a door to open to you."

His voice is so sincere that tears spring to her eyes. "Thank you."

His hand wraps around hers and lifts it to his mouth. She waits for the touch of his lips—and waits, for one rapid breath after another, while he looks through the moonlight at her. She gazes back at him for hours, for days, feeling the warmth of him sink all the way into her heart, aware of some exquisite sensation curling through her soul.

The kiss, when it finally comes, is brief, as though a suddenly remembered task. The broad slope of his shoulders marches away into the night without pause or deviation. Hero holds her kissed hand in her other one and watches him go. Far above, explosions of light fill the sky and stream downward in hissing golden sparks.

:

She walks with her arm threaded through Don Pedro's. Soldiers and courtiers romp to and fro in a shifting cloud around them. Leonato and Claudio are somewhere behind.

Sunshine falls generously on the vineyard, which bursts with fertility, as though eager to show its best side to its master. High in the sapphire-blue sky hang clouds whiter than cotton. The breeze is steady and cool, a welcome balance to the hot caress of the sun.

The workers pause respectfully and touch their foreheads as the prince passes. Don Pedro is in a wonderful mood: he makes easy conversation with Hero, points out sights of interest and tells lighthearted jokes, and never once mentions the count's name. From time to time he stops to ask questions of his workers. Hero is smiling at some remark of his when the vines give way to Don John. He is eating grapes and resting his forearms on a fencetop, and he watches his brother approach without changing his posture.

Don Pedro speaks with him about the crop and their mutual hopes for the season's vintage. The brothers are cordial, while not friendly; they are always on better footing when their conversation revolves around business matters, and though Don John maintains his characteristic air of studied insolence and lassitude throughout the interview, Don Pedro doesn't deviate from polite deference to him as the true ruler of this green-and-indigo kingdom.

The soldiers converse with the workers. The courtiers, knowing Don John to be overseer, ask him stupid questions which he answers with a curtness that fails to scare them off. Hero looks: at his head tipped back, dark hair shining in the sun; at the lines of perspiration on his throat, the long sharp line of his nose; at the white curve of his top row of teeth that shows when he speaks.

It is not until certain other members of the party arrive that the bastard prince turns invisible again. Claudio walks past with eyes fixed on some spot ahead. Leonato stops but speaks to Don Pedro as though his brother isn't even there. The others notice and follow their lead.

Between two slow blinks Don John meets her eyes for a single expressionless look.

Then they are moving again—stepping across the dirt and through the heat to continue their tour. Hero resists the urge to look back.

No ghost, him. No, he is flesh and blood and muscle and bone, and she wants it ablaze beneath her fingers, she wants it wrapped around every inch of her body. She wants to make his blood roil, his muscles shudder.

That, yes. And more. Her name caught in his throat. His heart on fire for her.

:

Her words are still forming, solidifying. Like bones hardening and wings strengthening. Still tender, but they have mass, they have substance, they will acquire certainty. They will rescue her, they will catch the wind currents and carry her far away.

:

Hero dozes in the dappled shade of her bower, secure in the knowledge that the men are out on a hunt and will not return until late afternoon. Such is the paltry quality of her sleep lately, worrying over the day to come, that she falls into a real, deep slumber.

Soft fingers touch her hand. She opens her eyes to Claudio's smile.

She jolts up on her bench and realizes the orange disc of the sun is touching down on the horizon. The men are returned and she is alone in the garden.

She knows if she runs he will follow her all the way to Beatrice’s door. If she refuses his suit he will go to Don Pedro and Leonato and she will have hastened the nail into her own coffin.

First he waxes sweet: praises her beauty as though she deserves any credit for it, as though her face is all she gives thought or effort to, as though it forms the foundation of her value. Then he recalls their wedding - how lovely it should have been, how perfect - and only delayed, he hopes, with a look and tone that knows it is only a question of choosing the day.

“I can think of no greater honor, lady, no greater joy, than to have you for my very own. You would be my greatest treasure.”

She says slowly: “I do not want to be a treasure.”

He smiles. “Of course you do.”

“No, I—”

“Hero. Men know that all women want to be treasured and adored. Why do you pretend otherwise? You were happy enough to hear such sweetnesses in times past. Ah—you must play coy now because you do not believe the sincerity of my feelings.” He reminds her that he, like she, was among last summer’s injured parties. He will go to his grave furious over Don John’s despicable lies - what a scoundrel, what a demon! Such a betrayal, though happily false! He, Claudio, had not known a man could know such pain. Such jealousy as he displayed could only be felt by the most loving heart. Surely she knows his love is undying?

She imagines a forest in her lungs. She thinks of last summer’s whisper of a voice, tries to summon it. “I have never asked for your love.”

He frowns. “You are changeable today, Hero.”

Deliverance arrives in the form of her handmaiden, her dear, darling, mousy little maid, flying up the path, screeching about an emergency Claudio must attend to _this instant,_ Don Pedro needs his help—a fire—a thief—a knife fight—! Baffled and alarmed, he takes off for the house at a run.

Hero vows to never sleep again.

“I am sorry—” gasps her maid. “I’m so sorry. I was watching for him, but that cook got me manning the pig roaster and I didn’t know they were back until— Am I too late?”

No. Not too late. Not too late. Hero sends up one prayer of thanksgiving after another, shot up from her heart like fireworks. Her maid takes her trembling hands in both of hers. “Come inside, lady. I’ll have supper sent to your room.”

“No. No, I must attend to something first.” She gives the girl a tight, grateful hug and gently shoos her back to the house.

Word of Claudio's errand in the garden will have spread across the estate by now.

The gardens are quiet. If he were near, Claudio would not have been.

First she searches the vineyards. The workers have already stopped for the day, so she has no one to ask whether they have seen him. All she finds is row after empty row. Eventually she risks calling his name, but no voice answers hers and no shape of him appears in the dusk.

She creeps through the house. His rooms are vacant.

Just missed him, the cellarmaster tells her. She steps back out into the night with her hands in fists. An unseen breeze ripples through the dark forms of the cypress.

Her long circuit carries her back to where she started. He is in the same plaza where she discovered him the first night of her stay—only, this time all the lanterns are burning, as though beckoning her to him.

His long, dark form is almost sprawled on the ground: one leg extended, the other bent, an arm flung out. The rest of him is propped against the fountain wall. Lanternlight throws gold and shadows across his face. A bottle rises to his lips, the liquid within sloshing loudly. The rich, sweet smell of brandy clings to him.

"And? Are you to marry?" His voice is sour and beginning to thicken but not yet slurring.

"No," she says, but too timidly; it sounds like a question. _No?_

"Not yet," he translates.

She kneels beside him, facing him. White gravel draws a slender line between her folded legs and his outer thigh. His eyes are shining black.

He reaches up and runs a slow thumb over her lower lip. "And this will be his." He tips his head back against the fountain rim. "Who can blame him for his greed?"

She draws her head back. "Is that what you consider me? Something to possess?"

"I would possess you as spirits do. We would possess each other. My soul in your body. Your soul in mine. Like ghosts."

They look at each other.

Hissing lantern wicks, the silvery waterfall, the evening songs of owls and insects—all sound is drowned out by the sudden roar of her heartbeat. His eyes are dark and wanting and hold hers as though watching for something to appear in them. He sets the bottle down.

His shirt is unbuttoned at the neck, as ever. She can see the quick rise and fall of his chest. His eyes follow her every movement, though he himself is motionless, holding himself in check despite the sudden delirious, glittering, maelstrom-strength magnetic pulse between them that makes her think how easy it would be to pour herself into his body—it would only take a touch.

Hero leans forward and kisses him.

He responds instantly, surging forward to slide his fingers through her hair. His mouth locks to hers, firm and ardent, breath hissing out through his nose. He pulls her flush to him; his heartbeat thunders through her chest. His kiss is sweet fire, it's boiling wine and ocean stormwinds and falling upwards and Hero gives in to it completely.

She holds his face in her hands and drinks him in. She presses the pattern of her fingerprints into his skin and leaves the indent of her mouth on his lips. She clings to him, loving the heat of his body, the taut unyielding muscle and bone that enclose her, the slide of his tongue against hers, the callused hand that sweeps her hair back from her arching neck to make space for his mouth. She loves the scratch of his short beard, the scents of his soap and sweat, his hair parting for her fingers, his warm breath mingling with hers - every molecule of proof that he is here, holding her, and she is here, holding him, and both of them are wanting and aching and flaring and cracking open together.

It's intoxicating, the heat and the hunger, and she is so caught up in it that when he stiffens and shoves her away it takes her a moment to realize what he has done.

He lurches backward against the fountain with chest heaving. He runs a trembling hand over a mouth that is turned red with her. "Touché."

Hero stares at him, dazed, mystified, gravel digging into her palms.

"This was all quite artfully done but I refuse to be humiliated further. You will grant that we are now even."

And like a departing storm he is gone. He leaves her sprawled on the ground, bewildered and hurt, unable to so much as call his name from a throat that has closed like a steel trap.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks to her_madjesty for letting me steal the harbor analogy!

The kitchen servants are first, followed by the house servants and the stable grooms. They are edges and shadows in the grey morning light. The vineyard laborers and gardeners arrive with the sunrise. Hero, sleepless at her window, watches the villa wake up.

After a long night’s deliberation she has deduced what he must have thought. It all goes back to a year ago, everything goes back to a year ago, they are all destined to spend the rest of their lives living the events of a year ago. Time moves forward like a river around them but leaves them spinning in a whirlpool.

Simply put, he thinks she wants revenge. It is the thing he understands best, after all. Vendettas, resentment, opportunity. Of course he would never think her feelings for him could be real - look at who he is and what he did to her. So he thinks she means to break his heart in retribution for her wrecked wedding and the near destruction of her life.

And Hero, blindsided, with no idea of her crime, was unprepared to say the words she would need to convince him otherwise. She still doesn’t know what they are.

:

In broad daylight she cannot go hunting for him in the vineyard, so she resigns herself to a day picnicking on the slope that overlooks the valley. She spreads blankets on the hillside and covers them with books and paints and pears and olives and her handmaid and assorted members of the household. They make a merry day of it, though Hero’s mind is elsewhere. She sketches badly and endures the discomfort of a stomach in knots.

At afternoon’s close they return to the house through the courtyard. His gait is unmistakable; she registers it even before her eyes catch on his broad shoulders, the back of his dark head rising above the others. Her heart pounds.

A crowd has gathered to bear witness to the arrival of Don Pedro’s newest acquisition: an Arabian stallion, a fine, strong specimen that dances in place and snaps at anyone who gets too close. The bastard prince is by the fountain, splashing water on his face and neck. Hero weaves through the figures in the courtyard; they barely notice her.

“John,” she says.

He looks down at her with jewel-brilliant eyes, hard and dark as onyx. _I meant it,_ she wants to say, but falters. They are guarded as scales, a stranger's eyes, eyes that barely register her, that show no sign of having meant it himself, or of wanting her to have meant it, or caring if she did.

“It has never been my intention to hurt you—”

“Take your speeches elsewhere, Lady Hero. I am hardly an interested audience. You flatter yourself that there is fascination where there is only indifference.”

She says, low: “You returned the gesture.”

“What man wouldn't? What had I to lose by doing so?”

“Say what you will for your own actions. For mine - I insist that I am sincere, sir, and have been for the duration of my time here.” She fists her hands around her shaking fingers.

He looks down at her with a face as revealing as a mask. “Then you are a fool,” he says, “for not guarding against what will only bring you pain.”

“Lady,” calls her maid, “your father approaches,” and Hero is forced to step away.

:

What could birth more lifelong rage in the hearts of Don Pedro and Claudio than for the Lady Hero to fall in love with John the bastard? She will never be his, so why not reap what spoils he can from her self-proclaimed sincerity?

This is his new game.

He steps up to escort her to supper. She thinks for the first time since the night she arrived that he looks like the villain of a year ago.

He takes her hand, uses it to draw her close to him. He bends his head over hers and, holding her eyes with his empty ones, lifts her hand to press a gentle, lingering kiss to her fingers. “My lady,” he says softly.

Hero orders herself not to cry.

A version of this same scene repeats night after night. He abandons their careful secrecy; his mission is to make Claudio doubt Hero’s love for the rest of their wedded life, so his cold courtship must be on display. She waits for Don Pedro to remove him but the prince only watches warily. If she were to respond favorably she knows he would vanish in an instant, but she withdraws like a crab into a shell at his approach.

Oh, Beatrice! Hero was so sure all she would need to do was speak, but he shut down his heart and she was too late to catch it, and by the time she arrived to make things right its casing was already sun-packed and hardened. Why should he reopen it? It is a fact that he will lose her, just like he has lost everything else that has ever meant something to him. What he has never had is vengeance, and here it is—close enough to smell, to anticipate. He operates with the single-minded focus of a soldier at war, Claudio his target, Hero his ammunition.

It makes her want to scream until her lungs buckle. The old anger was never put to bed, but it had cooled to simmering. The nightmare she encountered in the gardens those many weeks ago was reconciled to the terms of his life in Aragon. Unhappy, yes, but at peace. Now he seethes wrath and despair, his fury reawakened every time he looks at the man who sent him to hell on the battlefield and furthermore means to claim the unattainable object of his own heart.

It is like being caught in a tempest, to love without acknowledging it. It is a torment to love in the knowledge that he can never have her. Doesn’t she have reason to know it?

As for her—he looks at her without seeing. In the bright, hot sunlight, in the middle of a busy crowd, he is as distant from her as Beatrice.

He disappears from her life so suddenly she is left reeling. His vacant space in the air is almost solid. His shadow still lingers on the floor by her feet. His body caresses her but the soul is absent. She doesn’t know how to call it back.

She understands. He does not know how to be loved. Revenge on one’s enemy is no small thing and he has waited a long time for this chance. Faced with choosing between the two, he is reverting to old instincts and the primary one is to inflict pain. He is succeeding, far beyond his intent. She can see the frustration that cuts through his sweet: she is supposed to succumb to the game; how can he win if she doesn’t?

She understands. He has cut the single pearl from the oyster, stripped the sun of all beauty and left only stifling heat. He had been her one safe harbor, full of jagged rocks and sunken ships and boasting more hazardous shoals than clear depths, but a haven to her and treacherous to any who followed—gone without warning, flinging her out to crash on the reef, to gulp saltwater instead of oxygen, to make her way through each day like a swimmer far from shore.

Suppertime, and he reaches for her.

With Claudio mere steps away, Hero must accept the arm he offers.

:

(But, but, but. She watches him attempt to exorcise the turmoil in his heart and thinks of all the smiles she sent down the table, _she_ —)

:

After losing her ally she is even more careful to keep away from Claudio, going so far as to spend hours in the underground tunnels with a candle and a book. She takes her morning and midday meals in her room. The only time she encounters her unwanted suitor is at supper.

Her father is usually in company with Don Pedro and Claudio so she makes the most of every opportunity for a word alone. She tries to drudge up homesickness in him, begs to visit Beatrice, beseeches him for time. She is afraid to mention Claudio’s name for fear it will lead to the count being summoned to the room.

Leonato scolds her for her marked absence - are they not guests of a prince? He is noncommittal in regard to the other topics, but he says enough to make her heart rise with relief. He, too, is growing weary of this place. He wants his own dirt beneath his feet. He expects they will be home within the fortnight.

:

—And then she thinks fiercely no, no, she had not foreseen this, and she would not have given him up if she had. She has not.

How, she thinks, can this have happened twice? Two knives thrust into the heart she held out; two lovers gone with the same shock and suddenness of death; herself abandoned on the ground, blood cascading over the fingers pressed to her chest.

He looks at her with eyes like overcast skies. He touches her with hands she knows and tension lines splinter out across her soul. Hero wraps her arms around her chest and tries to hold herself in place.

She begins to take supper in her room.

:

Don John finds her in the garden before the dawn mist has burned away. She is standing in a small circular alcove walled with topiaries. For one brief golden moment her heart leaps at the sight of him, then plunges into her stomach.

“Your company has been sorely missed at supper these two nights. I hope you have not been unwell.” His tone is warm; his expression is calculating.

All the tears Hero has kept at bay for a week surge into her eyes and throat. She steps back from him. “Stop this. _Stop._ ”

He looks taken aback. She says, “How can you live with yourself, to use me this way? You think you’re hurting them? It barely touches them! They hardly feel it!”

“They would, if you were of a mind to partner in the endeavor with me!”

She is incredulous. How can anyone utter such a statement, let alone answer it? Her lungs are both empty and full: of burning fire, of a paralyzing wave of seawater that floods her chest cavity, of desperation as thick as honey. She covers her face with her hands. “Oh, God! Take me away from this place!” She has to force herself to breathe. “Once again, John, I am your true victim, not they.”

“Hero, you don’t understand the history between—”

She bursts, “Don’t I! Who better! _Who better_ to understand your anger? Of course I understand your hatred for them! What I cannot understand is your commitment to it. Why is this the only thing you can be? This writhing mass of hatred? It’s poison! And it will kill you long before it kills them!”

He comes close to her, eyes hot and flashing. "To be _good,_ as you and they see it, means to do nothing. If I do nothing I am nothing. I refuse to be nothing—and so I must do, even if devilry is my only option. I will be seen, Hero! - only as a villain, yes, but a _living_ one. I will not spend my life a ghost."

Hero chokes on angry tears. "You are not nothing to me."

“You say as much and yet you flinch from me.”

“This bed is of your making.”

“I cannot help what I am!”

“Aren’t you tired of that excuse? Of course you can! I have seen the honor in you—”

He is all scorn. “Honor is a falsehood! No man in the world truly has it.”

“And you would rather let yourself rot from the inside out?”

He roars, “It is who I was born to be! You have seen _that_ as well! Do not disremember the part I played. I dragged you to the doorstep of hell. I would have ushered you in.”

“And so—what? You must do it to me again? You must break my heart again and again until there is nothing left of me but pieces?”

This time he is the one to turn away, running both hands over his face and through his hair. She can hear him taking deep breaths. She tries to calm her own breathing.

When she can finally speak her voice low and slow, tear-clogged. “I do not disremember. Your intentions were vile and your actions despicable. And your remorse has been plain, no matter what you claim you are or must be. Can you not see that I have forgiven you in turn?”

But she is speaking to a man who has been told all his life that he deserves neither love nor mercy. What he knows is what he has always been told: That he may not wish for what other men may expect. That he was born an outcast and can never hope to be more. That he is incapable of goodness. He advances on her angrily in defense of the truth he knows. “You waste your forgiveness on me. I have no use for it.”

“The decision is not yours to make.” How can she explain to this man that she can see every facet of him as easily as looking through glass? Everything he is and is not. Everything he might have been and could be. “I see you in all permutations and I do forgive you—all of you. And you may refuse my forgiveness but you cannot prevent me giving it freely and fully.”

He looks away again, mouth tight and frowning, breath harsh though his nose. Hero watches him through brimming eyes. “Would it so destroy you to quit your hatred?” She implores, “Is there nothing better you can trade for it?”

He hooks his thumbs into his pockets and shakes his head slowly. His voice, when he finally speaks, is quiet. “It is a sad thing that a heart like yours should be so wasted on men such as us. And you are still a fool, Hero. You ought to have followed my lead and played the game. Now you will suffer all the more for it.” He looks suddenly tired.

It will be full morning soon; the lingering cool of the night is giving way to the advancing sun. Light tips into the topiary hedge and burnishes the highest points gold. Don John stands motionless, his head bent to study something on the ground.

Hero stares past him. Her voice is dull. “Have you nothing more to say to me, my lord?”

His bent head doesn’t lift. She hears him swallow. He says quietly, “Nothing.”

She bites her lip hard and holds her breath and leaves quickly before she can begin crying in earnest.

:

Delayed the arrow, not stopped. Paused the arrow, that's all, that's _all,_ not destroyed, not rerouted. She hurtles forward into the fate that has been waiting for her all along, tucked into the shadows while she flew through the sunlight like a goldfinch that does not know its cage is made of glass.

Here is Claudio on his knees, here is her father beaming and Don Pedro clapping him on the back, here is Don John turned ashen behind them, here is everything she has labored for come to nothing.

She had thought herself safe. Don Pedro, though known to be in league with Claudio, had been amiable and unpracticed, asking for the pleasure of joining her on her morning walk, and she, having left his brother minutes before, had wanted the comfort of a friend. Her thoughts had been far away when the question dropped from his lips like a stone.

Stammering in shock, she found herself pulled by the arm into the garden’s main plaza and met by a crowd.

Claudio is bright with triumph. Leonato and Don Pedro are self-congratulatory. Hero is speechless. And Don John, who stepped out of the grove as Claudio fell to one knee, is a sight to behold. The stranger is gone; his eyes are wild, his eyes are dying black stars, and she can see that in this moment, about to finally really lose her, he has finally acknowledged that not a single part of this is a game to him.

Her eyes meet his.

He lunges at Claudio with a roar. Even with such a warning, no one has time to react, and he strikes true: a resounding blow to the count’s jaw that sends him flying.

The plaza erupts. Gardeners and soldiers come running; Don Pedro and Leonato try to separate the brawlers, but they have been aching for fisticuffs for weeks and have no intention of delaying this fight a moment longer. The pair choke each other to near-strangulation, kick the feet out from under each other, and trade loud, bruising blows to the head and gut. They snarl like wild animals, wrestling for the upper hand, and more than once Hero is certain one is about to kill the other.

By the time the men haul the prince off the count—a display of aggression that they will attribute to Don John’s longstanding jealousy of Claudio and resultant fury at this new triumph—one of the statuaries has been toppled, a full plot of shrubs trampled, and there is blood absolutely everywhere.

And it is too late.

She never spoke a word. She never accepted him, but she didn’t have to say anything at all. All they needed to hear was the question. The answer was always a given.

“Tomorrow!” says Leonato.

:

When she gets to his chambers he is crouched on his hands and knees and bleeding all over the floor.

Hero says softly, “John.”

His head jerks up. He looks over his shoulder with a face covered in red. The next instant he is on his feet, blazing with ire and panic, arms flung out, heedless of the blood streaming from his nose into his mouth.

“How can they! How can you let them!” He is a black stormcloud full of crackling lightning. “You, chained to that—that mewling malt-worm! I'll be damned if I watch it happen!” He strides across the room to her and clutches her face in his hands. His eyes sear into hers, turmoil like a living thing on his skin; then he releases her and turns away. He grabs the first thing he sees—a large porcelain pitcher—and hurls it at the stone wall; it shatters with a crash. He stands before the fireplace with chest heaving. "God above! I wish I'd been a better man."

Hero goes to the washbasin and soaks the towel. “Come here. Hold still.”

She gently cleans up his face. For a few minutes the room is quiet but for the sound of his gradually-slowing breathing and the scratch of the cloth over his beard. His nose stops leaking blood. The cut on his forehead congeals. His eyes never leave her face.

He grips her hands. “If I spoke to your father—”

She breathes through a rush of happiness and heartache. She shakes her head.

“His love for you—”

“His love for me would demand he protect me from you, or so he thinks, and I would never see you again.”

“We can run.”

“Your brother will find us in a moment and this time Claudio will kill you.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“I won’t.”

He swears fluently and with passion. He releases her and circles the room, running his hand over his neck as he paces. Hero folds the blood-streaked cloth and replaces it. In front of the fireplace he stops and looks at her.

There is a bruise rising around his neck and a painful looking lesion just above his collarbone where he caught the edge of a statuette base. His shirt is dirty and the neck is torn. She notes that he did not limp when pacing. His injuries will heal; no lasting damage has been done.

The rise and fall of his chest is slow and even. His dark eyes travel down her form as though imprinting the image on his mind, then rise to hold hers with breath-stealing intensity. The agitation is gone; a different fire burns in them, now. He steps toward her with intent.

“We cannot,” she whispers. “Not anymore.”

“He does not own you yet,” he says roughly. “I will take what is rightfully mine and give it back in equal measure.”

His hands close loosely around her wrists. She sinks against his chest.

It is the same mouth that lowers to hers but the kiss is altogether different. He kisses her deeply, with purpose and hunger, the warmth of him wrapped around her, solid against her chest. Not unchained volcanic heat, this - it is their souls exposed, it is love in turmoil and it's aching and loving and focused and honest and goodbye. It is deep and slow and reverent, absorbing her into him, cutting himself open to receive her, cleansing all the recent days and defying the ones to come.

They break apart. He says hoarsely, “Hero—I've been a true fiend—but you _must_ know—”

A cough at the door startles them both: Don John’s manservant, standing like a prim little soldier, his expression stoic. The prince roars for him to get out.

The man doesn't blink. “Your brother is on his way here, sir. He is but moments away.” His eyes flick toward Hero, still enclosed in Don John’s arms.

No one needs acknowledge the trouble that would follow Hero being caught in any man’s chambers and the bastard prince’s particularly. She squeezes his hand gently and slips away.

:

Leonato.

Her desperate pleading falls on deaf ears. Her arguments are the same ones he has already heard, if more vehement, and he dismisses her again.

“Papa, I _beg_ you. Do not make me do this.”

“You will thank me for it someday. He has changed for the better, and you will rise with his star.” He takes her hands to lift her from the floor where she has sunk to her knees. He kisses her cheek and smiles at her. “I believe I will wear the vest with the blue brocade tomorrow. What do you think?”

:

Don Pedro.

“Count Claudio refuses to have my brother at his wedding and my brother refuses to attend, so you may be at peace. There will be no sequel to today’s scene.” He sounds quite satisfied with himself. The dappled shadows of the arbor leaves fall across his hand as he pours wine for them both.

“Sir, I have come to you for another reason.”

She pleads her case. He assures her that her concerns are nothing more than a case of nerves. Who knows Claudio better than himself? The events of a year past have lingered too long in her mind; she must dismiss her fears and prepare herself for a good life with a good man.

If she didn’t know better she would think her father had provided him his script.

Before she departs from him, she mentions his brother. “His absence tomorrow will appear to be an insult to us.”

“Very well,” he says, clearly thinking what she knew he would: that attendance at the wedding is a just punishment for the bastard prince, a way of gloating after the scene today: he will have to bear witness to Claudio’s victorious happiness.

:

Claudio.

The count boasts an unattractive black eye. He greets her with a lopsided smile. “I wondered where you had gone.”

He has been watching a game of bocce. She declines the arm he offers. He leads her to the neighboring garden plaza, the air of which is perfumed with carefully-tended lilies of every color.

“This setting suits your beauty, my sweet. A true jewel. I shall have such a garden made for you.”

“What do you mean to do, sir, in Messina? My father is well and you have never shown an interest in the day-to-day management of the villa. Your days will be empty.”

“I will love my wife.”

“I will be busy as well.”

“How so?” He smiles again. “With your paintings?”

“You have no passion for the labor required, sir.”

“Perhaps not. I am soldier, not a farmer or vintner.”

“How, then, do you intend to care for my land and my people?”

“As any man does. I don’t understand the meaning behind these questions, Hero. It is not a wife’s role to be so—questioning.”

“What exactly do you imagine a wife’s role to be, _lord_?”

“To beautify. To comfort me. It is best for all parties when women adorn and support.”

“I am used to helping my father and uncle manage the estate.”

“Yes, you will look after the house as you please.”

“There is more to the estate than the house.”

“Not for a woman. I am surprised at your father, though it is true he did not have a son to teach.”

“You would shut me out from the dealings of my own land and people?”

“It will not be yours. I do not mean to add a mercenary color to this arrangement, for you know I love you, but you do not come free of taint. I will heal your damaged reputation—have you any idea how stained it still is? Shut away at your little farm, in your quiet corner of the world, you could not possibly know what people say of you. But I will cleanse you. I will restore your name and your father’s name. You might show me the appropriate gratitude.”

“Gratitude! Your kind condescension can find its way to hell. For nigh a year I was spared from marriage to a man so eager to believe the lies told of me that he never thought to doubt it, never sought the truth, but went out of his way to ruin me as viciously as he was capable of doing. A man who couldn't even woo me himself, but had to court me by proxy! That is no man!”

“How can you say such things, Hero?”

“Have no doubt: I despise you, Claudio, and I will all my life long.”

“In time you will come to love me as you did, I am certain.”

“I swear I never will, sir. In that knowledge, I hope you have the wisdom to withdraw your suit.”

“I will not.”

There, in his eyes: ill-concealed vindictive satisfaction. A glint in their depths alerts Hero for the first time to how livid he is over her rejection of him a year ago. It sears through her as though she has touched lightning. His expression contorts.

“I am owed this, Hero! I have earned it! You have humiliated me, you have made me wait, you have flaunted your favor with other men; I have danced to your tune long enough.”

There, there, that old stale jealousy, that vindictive distrust, the reddening coals of his violent, incendiary temper, eager for an outlet.

“You are _mine._ ”

Horror rises in her, looking at him. This is not love. Her soul cries out with it—this is _not love,_ God save them all, what will this loveless man do? How will he punish her people, her children, herself?

Her death would better serve her people than inflicting such a master on them. Giving him access to her father’s wealth and power would wreak far more devastation than the loss of her honor. She is betraying all of them if she lets it happen.

:

Don Pedro’s chapel is larger and lovelier than her own, but the bare walls and quiet humility offer the same familiar comfort. Hero curls herself against the wall and cries.

When there are no more tears left in her body, she opens her swollen eyes. The trees outside are still swaying in the breeze. The block of sun is still warm and silent on the flagstone floor. The wooden cross on the wall is still a patient, enduring reminder.

She begins to pray.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny warning for some brief M. it’s not hot. you’ll know it when you see it.

Cold seeps from the flagstones beneath her feet up into her femurs, reaching for her kneecaps. Hero stands in the block of moonlight and does not move.

To have her full voice, finally—only to meet an audience deaf to her screams. To shake the shoulders of her so-called protectors and find them lifeless, heartless—is it not a wonder all the women in the world have not gone mad? Men only listen to men and yet the only voice that will speak for her is her own. And still she must speak, because if she is silent at this crucial moment she will be voiceless for the rest of her life.

Don John maintained that she had a choice and the fact is she—terribly—does. She has been spinning from one option to another but the only real answer is obvious. There is only one way to shake them off. There is one thing they can hear.

It will be like shooting poison into her veins. She will dig her grave with her own teeth and tongue. She will harm her people, but better than her husband torture them to death.

To possess her voice, only to use it this way—the irony is sickening.

Silent, obedient. Deadly.

She will break it. She will snap it in half. If she has to break herself to do it, so be it.

Exhausted, Hero folds herself up on the floor and falls into sleep dreading the morning.

:

Her dress is the same one worn a year ago; is that a portent? Today’s wedding brings destruction, but she cannot be certain for whom.

All of the villa has gathered outside. The crowd is three times that of her first wedding. That knowledge alone is enough to make her heart shrink. If her plan works, there will be no undoing it. She breathes and prays and counts the stones in the wall.

The rose garden must have been stripped to nothing: the air is so pungent with fragrance it makes her dizzy. She clutches her father’s arm. He pats her hand.

The doors open.

The slant of the aisle leading to the chapel means that the first person her eyes fall on is Don John. She has not seen him since their kiss, as he was confined to his rooms after his brawl with Claudio. Now, forced to attend the wedding, he is bathed and combed and in uniform, positioned at the front of the crowd with his brother, standing so straight and handsome she feels it like a sear across her heart. She can see the dark smudges under his eyes from all the way across the crowd. He looks forward and does not meet her eyes but she keeps her gaze on him as long as she can, his mere presence an anchor line drawing her in, keeping her upright. All too quickly she is deposited before the chapel and must fix her attention on the priest and the bridegroom. Her father’s hand slides away from her and she stands alone.

The priest is a sedate old man who has been a fixture at the villa for as long as she has known Don Pedro. Claudio smiles his boyish smile down at her, squinting happily as though she had pledged her love to him the morning prior instead of otherwise.

“If either of you knows any secret reason why you two should not be joined in marriage, I order you on your souls to say so.”

“Know you any reason, Hero?” says Claudio, as though it is a joke.

Hero says, “Yes.”

:

The lie is a simple one: she is no maid.

To have gained her voice, only to give life to his censure—it is a small death of its own.

Her memorized confession drops from her lips like a newly-forged knife, sharp and lethal, and she plunges it into herself, holding it to her abdomen as her lifeblood courses out over her hands. She tells them that the accusation of a year ago was valid: not what he witnessed, not Margaret at the window, but his suspicions ran true. She has taken a man to her bed, into herself, and the blood of her maidenhood is long since spilt.

Leonato is beside himself, and Hero worries for his aging heart—she will never forgive herself if the shock kills him. She wants to reach for him but she knows her touch would only burn.

She looks at the count and Don Pedro. They are too stunned for belief to have registered yet, but the doubt she planted has taken swift root. She can see it in his eyes: Claudio will never be certain of her. _I have won your game, John._ She holds her breath, waiting for her husband-to-be to decide whether he will keep his promise to restore her purity or throw her to the wolves.

Shockwaves are rolling through the watching crowd. Her words are repeated on every set of lips, sharing the news with those too far to hear or conferring with a dismayed neighbor to be sure they heard correctly. The lament for the woman they thought her is already rising; the vile epithets will follow soon enough.

Then stunned doubt turns to conviction and Claudio is raging, demanding to know the name of the man, and Hero knows a moment’s relief that she did not involve Don John as first intended. She had initially thought to marry him in secret, but Don Pedro’s priest is not their ally, and even had they found a way, what she said in his room holds true: they would have run until they were discovered; even Beatrice wouldn’t have been able to help them. She had then thought to ask him to truly deflower her, but it would have been as good as marrying him once the truth came out, and would have ended the same way; in which case, better to be truly married than mar the act with sin. Even without offering herself in return, he would have let her claim him as the defiler had she asked, she knows it: but it would harm his standing even further and she will not do that, will not stain him with dishonor he did not commit, will not force him to duel Claudio over a crime of which he is innocent; her lie will claim enough victims without requiring him as sacrifice too. A lie to save herself, of which she will suffer the heaviest consequences, is the only one she can bear to tell.

And, alone, she can run away to Beatrice. The stain will be on her, will follow her, and they will be glad to see her go. She does not have to ask whether Beatrice will help her carry this burden, her lioness sister-cousin who will rage when she knows the truth, who would embrace her even were it not a lie, the only love Hero has ever been sure of, her lodestar, solid ground, cold clear oxygen in her lungs.

Over the swelling volume of the crowd, Don John bellows, “No!”

Everyone looks at him.

He is furious. He tells her, “Do not do this. Speak the truth.” He looks at his astonished brother. “She has not done this thing.”

Don Pedro says, “The confession is her own.”

“And you do not question it? Knowing her as you do, you believe her claim?”

“The claim is heavy and not one to be made in jest. Why should I not?”

“So, then! Her words are honest only when they besmirch her name!”

“Yes, when her own words and her own name.”

“But not when they claim innocence, though those are the only ones that have ever held the truth. And yet it is deceit that clings, deceit spread by _this_ man, who purports to cleanse her from words he spoke, born from lies I fed him. See her, trapped in words she cannot escape—the only reason she is forced to stand here today!”

Claudio cries, “This man is a known liar! We do not heed you!

Don Pedro tells Don John, “You claim the lady is virtuous; she claims otherwise. From your respective histories of truthfulness, logic holds that hers is the honest witness. Why should we humor yours?”

Don John clenches his jaw. He turns toward her. “Hero, what color did your man's cock turn before he entered you?”

Hero flushes to her hairline.

“What color?” he demands.

She did not know it changed color. Red? Perhaps brown.

“To what would you compare the scent of that bed of pleasure?”

Hero looks at him and orders herself not to cry. Even the darkest of recent days did not find her so angry, so hurt. Does he want her to have to marry Claudio?

He holds her eyes with unyielding ones. “Describe it.”

She stammers—“Lavender.”

He shouts at the others: “Hear her! See her blushes, listen to her ignorance. She is _innocent_.” He turns on Leonato. “How can you let her destroy herself for you?”

Claudio tries to speak, only to be shoved back by his face. The bastard prince is practically vibrating with intensity; his voice shakes from the effort to keep from screaming the words. He tells Leonato, “ _No one_ \- has _touched her_. Can you not see she lies to escape the hell you would lock her in? You have driven your own daughter to desperation when you should be the first to protect her! You have closed your ears to her pleas and even now you do not hear her! The _truth_ of her!”

Chest heaving, he looks at his brother—defiantly, beseechingly.

Don Pedro is looking at both bride and brother. He appears to be doing some rapid mental calculations. Beside him, Claudio succumbs to his temper, raging about questionable goods and opportunist villains. Don Pedro looks at the count, then bows his head and steps back.

Leonato steps forward. He takes Hero’s hands in his. “Once again, I listened too well to others. I have been deaf to my own child. The only shame is mine. Come, daughter. We have much to discuss.”

And with a shrewd look at the bastard prince, he leads Hero, who is lightheaded with relief and shock, away from the chapel.

:

She tells him—almost—everything. She explains about drowning and about ghosts, about arrows and cages. About time and fear. About mazes and lungs and trust. She does not mention kisses that made her forget her own name.

Her father studies her for a long time, as though her face has changed along with her voice and must be relearned. Finally he asks, in the kind, wise tone she has not heard in so long: “What do you want, daughter?”

And Hero opens her mouth and saves them both.

:

He is standing in the corridor when Leonato opens the door. He pushes off the wall and straightens, tall and lean and alert. Hero feels as though sunlight has been poured directly into her bloodstream.

“Well,” says Leonato. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.” He casts an assessing look at the sentry, whose dress-coat is fully unbuttoned. “Did I not make it clear outside that I would not force her to do anything she does not wish to do?” To those familiar with it, however, his tone is approving.

Don John is studying her face, looking for evidence of the truth of this statement. Hero is already smiling at him but her smile deepens.

Her father asks, “Lord, where might your brother be found?”

“On the veranda. Sir—”

“You have spoken to him about my daughter?”

“I—Yes. Sir, if I may have a word—”

Leonato looks at Hero. “I'll let you tell him, shall I?” he says, and leaves without a backward glance, to Don John’s consternation.

Giddy, elated, Hero steps up to the prince and tangles his fingers with hers. He looks down at her in blended confusion and wonder. She lifts his hand to her mouth and presses a kiss to his knuckles.

She watches hope rise in his eyes, though he’s clearly afraid to unchain it. Slipping her other hand behind his neck, she raises herself up on her toes and fits her mouth to his.

Gentle hands cup her face. She can barely kiss him for smiling. Happiness burns through her veins, still too wild and immense to harness or look at directly; she wants to scream, to laugh, to fly, to shatter into a million glowing pieces.

She can feel him smiling, too; he has understood the message. The kiss quickly becomes a lost cause. She tucks her head against the hollow of his shoulder and nooses her arms around his chest, under the cloth of his coat, where she can feel the taut warm strength of him. His arms wrap around her; the scratch of his chin brushes her forehead. She leans into him, listening to the hard whoosh of his heartbeat.

“Could you be happy in Messina?”

“Yes,” his chest rumbles. And, because he knows: “Truly.”

She smiles against his shirt and tightens her embrace, and he drops his head to hers with a long breath out.

:

She sleeps almost the entire trip back home—cradled against his chest, strong arms holding her close. Later, all she will remember of the journey are the deep clear pools of his eyes and sunlight and shadows whisking in and out of the carriage window like a dream.

:

It takes a week for Beatrice to arrive. She hurtles from the carriage into Hero’s arms, crying, “Oh, my Hero! My dearest love! I cannot fathom how any of this could have happened! Are you well? Let me see you.” She spins Hero in place; Hero, laughing, submits to inspection.

Benedick is shaking hands with the others. “You snub your hosts, wife,” he calls. “Come greet your uncles and the princes.”

“I will not. They know I am only here for my cousin.”

Nevertheless, she crosses the courtyard to the men with Hero in tow, whom she keeps hold of with one hand even to embrace her uncles. She hugs them warmly, albeit with a scolding sound for Leonato, which he answers with a rueful chuckle. She curtseys for Don Pedro and informs him that she will have words with him later; his response to this audacious familiarity is a hearty laugh.

“A poor lot is the merry woman’s,” observes Benedick. “I see it already. She will rebuke her children and it will fill them with glee.”

Beatrice frowns at him, and at Hero for chuckling; then she turns a stern eye to Don John.

Hero interjects, “Come, you must be tired from the journey.”

“I am quite content.”

Benedick says, “But not I,” and hauls her inside.

The scent of bougainvillea blows through the quiet side porch. Don Pedro and the villa’s masters claim errands elsewhere, so it is just the four of them at the table—or rather three, as Don John is propped against the porch’s stone border wall, not wishing to dirty a seat. Over a platter heaped with fruit and cheese, Beatrice pins the prince with her eyes. “You do not deserve her.”

“I know it.”

“And you are satisfied with that!”

“I make no such claim.”

She demands, “Do you love her?”

“More than anything.” No poet, the don.

“Word is you and Claudio came to blows.”

“Yes.”

“Over Hero?”

“Primarily.”

“A long time brewing, I gather?”

“Yes.”

“How many times did he land a hit?”

“Five.”

“And you?”

A hint of a smile touches his lips. “Seven.”

Her eyes cut to Benedick. “He’s done what you never could.”

“There’s no call for that.”

She sips her wine and studies the prince. “And why should we give her to you? Our dearest treasure, the best of us all?”

Hero says, “Beatrice.”

He glances at her and says quietly, “I did not expect the questions to be easy.”

Beatrice tips her head. “What is your answer, then?”

“She gives herself. Only she can truly give herself.”

“Very well: why should she give herself to you?”

“That is a question for your cousin.”

“Who seems,” Benedick says pointedly, “to be in possession of all her wits.”

“Her examination is forthcoming, make no mistake.”

Deferring to Hero is labeled a lazy answer. He must navigate that, and the question of how he can be trusted after what he did, and how they can be sure he isn’t a swindler with an eye on Hero’s wealth and position. He answers them with determined patience, but his unpracticed tongue is no match for Beatrice, who seems unwilling to be satisfied. Finally she surveys him and asks, “Do you wish I had not come?”

“No, on the contrary. I am delighted to see you,” he answers, “for it means I may finally be married.”

“I may not fight you myself,” she tells him, “but if any harm befall her by your doing, intended or not, you may be certain you will not see the next sunrise.”

His mouth crooks up and a smile enters his eyes. When he speaks there is no malice in his tone. “Lady, I will never give you cause. Indeed, I am glad there is a dragon at the door. There has been a dearth of them, of late.” He straightens and bows his head to the visitors. “If you will hold further questions until supper, I must return to the builders. The work is hard and they are short two men.” He pauses at Hero’s chair. “I will meet you in the garden later.”

She smiles up at him. He slides a curl between two fingers as he goes.

Benedick tells his wife, “He comprehends her better than even you.”

Beatrice, watching Don John walk away, makes a noncommittal sound. “‘A dearth’? What did he mean?”

Hero's message, sent during the flurry of departure, had contained only the barest sketch of an explanation: that she had encountered Claudio in Aragon, and there had been designs by her father and Don Pedro to see the two of them wed; that Don John had been instrumental in circumventing that result, and to come home to Messina immediately, for she intended to marry him.

Beatrice does not have to be told about water or arrows. She holds Hero’s hand and listens with wet eyes to her cousin’s account of the weeks spent at Don Pedro’s estate: the glass cage, the ivy, the ghost. If a sword were near at hand, she almost certainly would have marched with it to the tale’s antagonists and beheaded them all—hence Hero’s prior warning to them to keep their distance until supper. Instead she weeps hot, helpless tears of belated distress while expostulating over the part she failed to play in preventing such events. What had she been thinking, to vacate the place at her cousin’s side for a mere marriage, when Hero had always depended on her so, when Beatrice had always been her protector? She should have known after last summer that her uncle, the prince, and the count were not to be trusted, should never have left her uncle’s house while Hero remained vulnerable. She should—noting arms crossed meaningfully by Benedick, here—at least have brought Hero to live in Padua.

“You were there,” Hero tells her. “You were with me every day. You gave me words when I could find none. Do you think such a simple thing as distance can remove the layers of you that are woven through me? You might try to cut out my soul, for all the good it would do.”

“But to be so alone you were driven into the arms of _Don John_ —”

“I was not driven.” She is firm. “I chose him.”

“He would have destroyed you, Hero!”

“Yes, and he will not deny it. But he chose me too. He chose _me_ , this time. Hear me, Beatrice. I was drowning and he was the only one to reach a hand into the water and pull me to the surface. For a time, wanting him was the biggest thing I’d ever done. I couldn’t have dreamt I was capable of it. It showed me I could want enormities, and achieve them too. I could want to never marry Claudio and fight the whole world to escape him. I could ask for John without hesitating. Don’t you see? I know your voice better than my own. If you had been there I would never have learned the sound of mine.”

Beatrice looks at her probingly, then smiles. “I cannot do battle with you, dearest heart. Anyone but you. I would follow you to the gallows if you told me I would survive. If you say that he is altered, if you say that he will be a good husband—how can I do anything but believe you? I will wipe my mind of days past and collect this new evidence. My warning to him stands, however.”

“Noted. And your husband?” They look at Benedick. “I follow my wife in all things,” he answers. Beatrice snorts.

His attention has caught on other matters. “Cousin Hero, the household seems… confused.”

Hero explains, “They were prepared to the last man to hold a lifelong grudge against the prince. My father told them they would do no such thing, which deepened their commitment even further, for they believed we had taken leave of our senses.”

“As did we, now you mention it. I’ve observed reticence but no grudge-holders. What changed their minds?”

“The man himself. He does not hide his affection for me, which has won over Ursula and the women; and since the day of our arrival he has been assisting with the annex build, working hard without complaint, which has won over my uncle and the men. My father’s and Don Pedro’s wholehearted approval has the rest of Messina all at sea; it shouldn’t be long before they follow suit.”

“I would have predicted the world’s end before the notion that I would see the day—”

“A common phrase with you,” puts in Beatrice.

“—the day when I would _smile_ to see my sister Hero married to John the Bastard… but, as noted by other parties present, perhaps I should accustom myself to such surprises. Myself married, and to _Beatrice_ , by God; yourself marrying our princely foe; what next?”

He amuses them for a while with wild predictions: humans journeying to the moon, wagons that move without horses, Don John making a speech of more than ten words at the wedding—then departs then to give them some time alone. For a time the cousins converse happily, catching each other up on news unrelated to each other’s lovers, discussing old friends and routines Beatrice is homesick for. Hero laughs more than she has since her cousin married.

In the distance—a dark head, a white linen shirt. He is too far off for her to make out his face but she can see his outstretched arm, his form bent in tandem with a cluster of workmen to lift something heavy. It is still habit to hide her reaction but Beatrice sees it all the same.

“Oh, sweetest Hero,” she laughs, and hugs her to her side. “You’re incandescent. It’s enough to make me really want to forget the past year’s offenses. I dare say soon enough I won’t remember the days before he was ours.”

:

She sees him before he sees her. He has changed out of his filthy work shirt and added a vest of red brocade. She admires the broad shoulders filling out the linen, the hair falling across his forehead, the slant of his dark brows, the curve of his perfect mouth, the long, liquid stride that is perplexingly arresting. His face wears an expression of deep concentration, which she is beginning to recognize as his default.

When he locates her his entire countenance lights up like a struck match. She makes a silent promise to him to ensure that such a look is always the one the sight of her elicits.

His mouth is soft against hers. He grins down at her. “And? Are we still set to marry on the morrow?”

She is momentarily distracted by his smile, by his hand on her neck. “She means well.”

“I know it.”

“I believe she’s come around, in fact. Wait and see—she won’t ask you a single interrogatory question at supper.” (This will be proved correct.) “How does the build progress?”

They walk, lost in happy planning and conversation, his arm looped around her waist, her fingers laced through his. She remembers doing this sort of thing during her first engagement to Claudio, but those plans had been sugar-spun, the niceties pure poetry and just as weightless. With Don John the talk is of more substantial dreams, more tangible small happinesses. The tempo of her heart picks up— _Real. Mine._

The sun drifts down toward the horizon. The shadows stretch long and tint him bronze and blue. Hero inhales honeysuckle.

“Such a small, comfortable garden.”

He laughs, low and quiet. “Don’t tell me: you want to put in a hedge maze.”

“I’d like something with a longer circuit than a quarter of an hour,” she admits.

He pulls her behind a topiary and gathers her to him. “And with a bit more cover,” he smiles. Hero wants to live in that smile, wants to cut her heart out of her chest and trade it with his, to have his heartbeat pulsing through her body at all times. His dark eyes are warm as sun-soaked earth. His hand lifts to move a curl out of her eyes. He says: “I am so happy.”

For a few minutes all she knows is the firmness of his mouth, the heat within. His fingertips leave blazing trails across her skin.

“Tomorrow,” he breathes in her ear.

The stroll resumes. Their hands find each other’s. His arm is warm against hers.

“Thank you,” he says. She looks up inquiringly.

“All my life I’ve been caught in a storm far out at sea—in the rain and the wind and massive waves tossing me back and forth without respite. And you are the deep calm waters far below.”

“Drowning you?”

“No,” he says. “No. For the first time I can breathe.”

Hero looks at the faint sheen of sweat on his skin, the remains of a hard day’s labor, all the water in his body gathered at the surface, dampening her fingers, making him shine. She says, “I know the feeling.”

:

What is the worth of a voice? What is the worth of ears that listen? Of a heart that seeks to understand?

Her life married to Don John:

His hand skimming down the length of her arm to tangle with her inkstained fingers, her thumb tracing circles on the inside of his wrist, the sun warm on her face, grapes heavy on the vines, songs on the lips of the laborers, her father at rest in the shade; her husband’s eyes shot through with light like sunshine through bourbon, his smiles quick and frequent, his feet chasing their children through the blooming gardens, his presence hailed upon arrival; in the house, a constant tintinnabulation of laughter, of singing, of chatter; her cousin’s family frequent visitors, his brother’s the same, ships busy in Messina’s ports, the ground steady underfoot; mist on the fields at sunrise, waking to him warm at her back, happiness deep in her bones and gratitude deeper; all the water in his body flowing through her lungs, collecting under the roots of the forest growing there, surging up wild green pathways and flooding her blood.

She wakes to blue skies and summer breezes. Beatrice, Ursula, and her little maid help her prepare. Beatrice’s delay has given them time to make a new wedding dress, one with more lace, far lovelier than the other. Ursula does Hero’s hair while she rubs daisy petals between her fingers. Her stomach is turning upside-down and over again. 

“Three times a bride, Ursula, and never yet a wife. Do you think that’s a portent?”

“Three is a holy number,” says Ursula, with such placid confidence that Hero is calmed.

Leonato is waiting for her. He kisses her forehead and she pauses to dab his wet, smiling eyes with her sleeve.

The doors open. They step into the sunshine.

The aisle to the man standing before the chapel is straight as a road, as an arrow. 

“If either of you knows any secret reason—”

He winks at her.

Oaths are invisible things and yet this one feels secure as a cornerstone. She speaks the weaving vows that will irrevocably knot her life with his and fiercely means every word, listens as they are made back to her. They bind themselves together like thread through cloth: careful, strong stitches. All at once her life is both halved and doubled.

Hero looks up at her husband’s face, into his smiling eyes.

He lifts her hand to his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [there’s a playlist, of course!](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ7ySQ-j70Ql0SfvNsvdQLWlercasqR8_)


End file.
